These days, more American families are adopting from China than any other foreign country, and a large number of those families are Jewish. A wave of girls is now coming of age, starting to face challenging issues of identity.
I\’m thinking of the Southern accent, the country-club attitude, the ship-captain husband, trying to figure out how any of that fits in with a story about a family from the Jewish ghetto of Esfahan. \”She might have told me,\” I confess. \”I didn\’t listen because it didn\’t make sense.\”
Social scientists, myself included, have charted — and implicitly celebrated — the growing and exhilarating diversity of Jewish identities, communities and innovation.
The gang violence that has recently wracked parts of Los Angeles compels me to ask this question: Where are all the Jewish gangs?\n\nI\’m not being cute.
The first Torah portion in Exodus is Shemot, Hebrew for \”names.\” \”These are the names of the Israelites coming to Egypt…\” (Exodus 1:1). That might be where we got the name of the parsha, but that is not where the parsha takes us. Namings take place throughout Shemot.
Honestly, I\’m glad that the recent vote of the Conservative movement has opened the door a bit toward acceptance of gay and lesbian Jews. Now that this teshuvah, or legal interpretation, was one of two that received a majority vote, I know that this helps some of my gay \”friends and family\” squeeze sideways through the now partially open door. I nevertheless remain sad and disappointed that the door has only opened a little, and the idea that it is a qualified acceptance is troubling to me.
For so many Jewish men, it always comes back to fathers and sons, despite what Philip Roth might think. Look at the films of Daniel Burman, the rising young star of the New Argentine Cinema.
\”I\’m a colorful person,\” Tochterman said. \”I like color; I like texture; I like mixing things together. I think my customer is a sophisticated, ageless, confident woman.\”
Living a life of dual identity is no simple task. On one hand, my peers and I are told to live up to the expectations of being Modern Orthodox teens, but on the other side of the spectrum we are tempted by the culture of the secular world on an everyday basis.
Daniel, a 24-year-old UCLA student, has gotten under my skin. I met him a month ago when I followed Rabbi Yossi Carron on his rounds through Men\’s Central Jail and Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles.
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